UK hospital cites 'trans' employee's feelings when cancelling woman's life-saving surgery over request for female care team

A London hospital has prioritized the feelings of a biological male who identifies as female over the life of a women who is the survivor of sexual violence. According to the Daily Mail, the patient, a retired lawyer and feminist, had a vitally important surgery cancelled by the hospital after she had requested an all-female post-op care team. 

The patient, called Emma by The Daily Mail, was in urgent need of colorectal surgery and had chosen the private London’s Princess Grace Hospital because it was one of only a few to use a Da Vinci robot which could perform the complex surgery in the most minimally invasive way possible.

But when Emma registered with the hospital, she made her legally-protected gender critical beliefs known.

“I was not going to agree to fill in reams of hospital paperwork about my non-existent ‘gender identity’ or give my pronouns to anyone,” she told The Daily Mail.

But an unsettling encounter occurred during her pre-op assessment on Oct 6. During her visit, an individual who appeared to be a biological male wearing a blond wig and makeup opened the door to her room and made eye contact with her.

This incident is currently being investigated by the hospital after Emma filed an official complaint. The patient then made an extra request for an all-female post-op care team.

“I began to wonder if it was just a coincidence that this member of staff with a ‘gender identity’ had made their presence felt to me in such an inappropriate way during my first visit,” Emma told the Daily Mail.

“I began to suspect that I had been targeted because my patient records showed that I refused to use pronouns and wanted single sex facilities, although I have no evidence of that.”

The survivor of sexual violence then started to panic at the thought of men providing intimate care during the week following her surgery and so wrote to the hospital’s parent company, HCA Healthcare, explaining her concerns and citing the landmark Maya Forstater ruling which enshrined gender-critical beliefs as protected in law.

However, instead of sympathizing with the distress of a very sick survivor of sexual violence, the hospital cancelled her surgery, citing the need to “protect staff from unacceptable distress.”

In the email from the hospital’s chief executive Maxine Estrop Green, she was told that she should make alternative arrangements for her surgery because the hospital “did not share her beliefs.”

After Emma implored them to reconsider, she was told that she could be offered a private room but that her request for single-sex care could not be fulfilled. The email also stated that the hospital had to protect its staff from “discrimination and harassment” in reference to her comment about pronouns.

“I am still in a state of shock at this punitive and discriminatory reaction by the CEO of this hospital which specializes in women’s procedures,” she told the Daily Mail.

“As always, this is about appeasing men who claim a gender identity. They will punish anyone who tells the truth … Women’s safety, dignity, and privacy continues to be sacrificed on the altar of this quasi religion.”

Author Mandy Stadtmiller took to Twitter to share a deeply personal account of the appalling care she received at the hands of male doctors as a 15-year-old rape victim, stressing how important it is that women be able to request female-only staff when they are vulnerable and distressed.

“Speak up about this as loudly and as noisily as you can. If you care about women at all please make it clear that this is not okay.”

She encouraged others to tell the hospital how wrong it is to hold a woman's life hostage simply because she wants a female care team, and doesn't believe in gender identity.

The letter, addressed to the hospital, reads: "Dear Mr. Hazen, I am appalled to hear that a female patient at the Princess Grace Hospital in the UK had her urgent and complex surgery cancelled because the hospital is unwilling to allow her to have female-only nurses assisting her. She is a rape survivor and requires female-only care. However, your hospital staff placed the feelings of males who wish to present female over her rights to appropriate care that would allow her the sense of safety, dignity and privacy she required. This is outrageous, inhumane, and extremely dangerous discrimination."

Women’s rights campaigner Kellie-Jay Keen called the hospital’s conduct “misogyny in heels.”

“Once we are in a society whereby women are compelled to pretend men can be women, and everything must flow from such orthodoxy, there is no end to the consequences,” Keen told the outlet. “Those that are the hardest to bear are around issues of safeguarding for women and children. Prioritizing a man’s feelings over a woman’s health is just another example, in this case particularly egregious, of how powerful this ideology really is.”

Outraged women took to social media calling for people to email the hospital to express their disgust that a woman’s life is worth less than the feelings of a male who claims to possess a female gender identity.

According to a Twitter thread, without the option of surgery using the Da Vinci robot, Emma’s only option is a more invasive open surgery, but her condition has since deteriorated and she may now be too weak to undergo such a procedure.